1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a system and method for the placement of articles of manufacture or pieces of equipment. More specifically, the invention allows a user to symbolically place an article or a piece of equipment on the floor space of a building at a remote site.
2. Related Art
It is a difficult task for a large corporation to keep an inventory of all the articles of manufacture or pieces of equipment placed at its sites. Typically, each site (e.g., the Dallas, Fort Worth site) has more than one building, and each building has floors that house the equipment.
As an example, a long distance telecommunications service provider (hereinafter xe2x80x9cservice providerxe2x80x9d) typically maintains billions of dollars worth of network assets. The majority of such network assets are typically installed in numerous field sites located throughout a vast geographical region that encompasses a long distance telephone network. For example, MCI maintains billions of dollars worth of transmission and power equipment located in hundreds of remote field sites throughout North America.
Typically, much of the network equipment is arranged and mounted in equipment bays. Such equipment bays are typically organized as a plurality of side-by-side racks, each having a plurality of top-to-bottom shelves, wherein each shelf contains a plurality of vertically positioned slots. Circuit cards are typically installed in the vertically positioned slots. In addition, other types of modules are installed on the shelves.
Conventionally, it has been difficult for service providers to maximize the use of space within remote sites. Typically, site planners design the layout of remote sites down to the rack level. These plans are then used by engineering groups to design the layout of each rack at the xe2x80x9crackfacexe2x80x9d level. That is, the engineering groups arrange the shelves within each rack, and the cards and other modules within each shelf. The result is a configured rack.
It is often the case, that changes made in the field are not recorded. Consequently, site planners and other groups do not necessarily have access to accurate and updated information pertaining to the layout and configuration of equipment placed within remote sites. This makes it very difficult for site planners and other groups to plan ahead for future changes and maximize the use of the available space with remote sites. It also makes it difficult for power engineers to accurately estimate the ongoing and changing power requirements for remote sites, which can cause unwanted delays and down times due to inadequate power reserves.
It has also been desired to plan, up to a desirable number of years in advance, what spaces on a floor (at a building within a site) are to be allocated to which types of equipment. This has made facilities planning for available floor space a difficult task.
Site planners also need to know when configured racks (including modules and shelves) that are placed on a floor space have been brought on-line. This information is required for power equipment in addition to transmission equipment. Further, it is would be very useful for site engineers to know exactly when installed equipment becomes activated and decommissioned. This would allow much greater flexibility for future planning of remote sites.
The present invention is directed to providing a system and method for allowing users to symbolically place an article or a piece of equipment on the floor space of a building at a remote site. The invention permits users to graphically represent objects (e.g., floor objects, zone objects, etc.) defining the available area and to store tabular information describing the configuration of the graphical objects and the articles or pieces of equipment represented by the graphical objects.
An article or a piece of equipment placed on the floor space is referred to as a xe2x80x9cfootprint.xe2x80x9d Hence, the present invention is primarily directed to creating footprints associated with an area of the floor space at a remote site.
In one embodiment, the piece of equipment occupying the floor space can be a configured rack. A rack can be conceptualized as a book case, comprising shelves aligned atop one another, with modules stored on the individual shelves. In a telecommunications application, modules such as circuit cards or multiplexers are stored on the shelves of a rack. Configured racks are stored in a configuration library, and are readily available for placement on the floor space, in order to create footprints.
In a preferred embodiment, a site hierarchy is created prior to creating footprints. Preferably, site hierarchies are created via an administrative tool provided by an implementation of the present invention. Data related to the site hierarchies are stored in a portion of a hierarchical database, preferably a relational database, that is conceptually referred to herein as the xe2x80x9csite hierarchy repository.xe2x80x9d The user uses the administrative tool to establish (non-graphically) a site, a structure (building) within the site, and a floor within the structure.
The user can then create a hierarchy of graphical objects located on a desired floor. Specifically, the invention allows the user to graphically represent, via closed polygonal shapes, a floor, zones inside the floor, planning units inside the zones, row segments inside the planning units, and footprints inside the planning units. In this manner, all the available floor spaces at a site can be graphically represented. The graphical representations are stored in the hierarchical database as a sequence of points, so that the representations can be automatically regenerated for a future use. In addition, physical attributes of the physical objects represented by the graphical objects, such as the area of a floor space represented by a zone graphical object, are stored in the hierarchical database.
Architectural drawings, which detail the physical limitation of the floor space (i.e., the locations of structural support columns, power cables) can also be used as an underlay for the graphical representation of a floor at a site. That is, a user can trace out a graphical floor object over an architectural drawing, so that the user is cognizant of how to most efficiently allocate the floor space for footprints.
Once the graphical objects are defined for a particular floor within a particular site, footprints can be placed on the floor. For each footprint, the user can store a tremendous amount of information regarding the article or piece of equipment occupying the footprint. This information is loaded into a hierarchical database for the footprint. Because footprints are only representations of actual articles and pieces of equipment, they can represent the occupant of a floor space at any point in time. In a preferred embodiment, the footprints store information relating to how the equipment is placed on the floor (e.g., defining an xe2x80x9cenvelopexe2x80x9d surrounding the footprint, the direction the equipment faces) and important dates pertaining to the equipment. Important dates include the planned and actual installation dates, activation dates (when the equipment is to be turned on), decommission dates (when the equipment is to be turned off) and removal dates for said article or said piece of equipment.
Finally, after the graphical objects have been created and tabular (non-graphical) information regarding the graphical objects and the footprints have been stored in the hierarchical database, the user can easily view and modify both the graphical objects and the non-graphical information. The user can also generate reports to view required information.